Don't forget to order your supplies for this year's International BookCrossing Day (April 21)! The last day to order them is March 25, because we'll need time to get them to you before the big day arrives. And this year's labels were designed by Azuki and they're great. So don't miss out, get your orders in while you can!

There was a local bookcrosser that only put a bookmark in the book with the BCID number on it. I added labels to the ones I found. We used to have meetups here in Little Rock, but gradually everyone else seemed to lose interest.

Welcome to BookCrossing from Arkansas, USA. Hope that you become as addicted as I am:)

So I stopped by the Little Free Library in San Diego and noticed that several books only had "BCID" and the number written inside in pencil. I understood it but I was looking; people who aren't familiar with BC probably won't get it. Is it considered bad form to pick these up and label them for the "owner"? I would hate for them to get lost in the shuffle because someone who didn't know about BC didn't report their find. Has anyone had issues with their books getting "lost" because of labels falling off or misunderstandings like this?

So I stopped by the Little Free Library in San Diego and noticed that several books only had "BCID" and the number written inside in pencil. I understood it but I was looking; people who aren't familiar with BC probably won't get it. Is it considered bad form to pick these up and label them for the "owner"?

I have noticed that some BCers don't seem to take a lot of trouble to label their books - but I've usually seen this with books brought to BC meetups, where the releasers are sure that the books will be taken by other BCers who'll know what to do. But I still think they should do a better job of labeling the books from the beginning, as we never know where they'll wind up, and as you point out, if a finder isn't familiar with BookCrossing, simply seeing "BCID: xxx-xxxxxxxx" won't necessarily draw them in.

I don't think it's bad form to add labeling to such books; sometimes I've done that myself with those meetup-releases. (If you wanted, you could send a Private Message to whoever released the books to ask them if they minded, though it's a fine line between offering to help and sounding critical of their chosen labeling-style...)

I'm sure that some/many BC books aren't heard from again due to some combination of skimpy or hard-to-read labeling, loosely-attached labels that fall out, or hastily-written BCIDs that have transposed digits or can't be easily made out. But even with flawless labeling, some folks just aren't interested in logging the books online, so while good labeling helps in getting JEs, it's not a guarantee.

If I ended up with a book only containing "xxx-xxxxxxx" or "BCID: xxx-xxxxxxx", and I wanted to release it again, I would mark it better before I released it. The exception is if it's a book for a bookring. Then I would leave it as it is.

There was a local bookcrosser that only put a bookmark in the book with the BCID number on it. I added labels to the ones I found. We used to have meetups here in Little Rock, but gradually everyone else seemed to lose interest.

Welcome to BookCrossing from Arkansas, USA. Hope that you become as addicted as I am:)

When somebody leaves a book in the wild like that, they usually have no expectations about finding it again, so that person is unlikely to know about the book, apart from any possible reviews written on the website.